Yankees still looking up in AL East

The Yankees invested a $20 million posting fee and $155 million in salary in Masahiro Tanaka, and that total of $175 million represents the highest amount of dollars spent on any free-agent pitcher ever -- more than $161 million spent on CC Sabathia, or the $147 million doled out for Zack Greinke. Without that commitment, the Yankees wouldn’t have landed Tanaka.

But Tanaka has a reputation for being exceedingly competitive, and beyond the Woodrow Wilsons -- the many $100,000 bills -- the notion of being desperately needed by a historic franchise must’ve appealed to a pitcher who wants responsibility, who wants to be "the man," who wants to win. Yankees officials sensed that in him when they met him two weeks ago.

If Tanaka had signed with the Cubs, he probably would've had to wait two or three years before seeing that franchise turn the corner. If he had signed with the Dodgers, he would’ve been slotted in behind Clayton Kershaw and Greinke; he never would have been "the man."

But now he has a chance to be the Yankees' superhero in New York, for a staff

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ABOUT THIS BLOG

Buster Olney

Buster Olney is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He began covering baseball in 1989, as the Nashville Banner's beat reporter assigned to the Triple-A Nashville Sounds. Later, he covered the San Diego Padres (1993-94), the Baltimore Orioles ('95-96), the New York Mets ('97) and the Yankees ('98-2001). Olney joined ESPN The Magazine in 2003, after six years at The New York Times, and he's the author of two books. "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty," is a Times best-seller, and "How Lucky You Can Be", about basketball coaching legend Don Meyer, was released in 2011.

He grew up in central Vermont collecting baseball cards and listening to Red Sox, Expos, Phillies and Pirates radio broadcasts, and was a rabid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He graduated from Vanderbilt University the same year as hoops legend Will Perdue, and ranks among the all-time leading scorers in pickup basketball at Memorial Gym. He claims to have witnessed the Commodores' winning football season in 1982 (although anthropologists have not yet confirmed this).